And Does having high typing speeds help with the development time?

Depends on what type of game you want.  Since mine has storyline dialog in it, I don't have to think too long about writing alot of code because I'm busy writing out all the storylines.

NOW I'm going to talk about Unity.

UMA-2.  I watched a video on this to see what it was, and found that This unity program script reminds me alot of Make Human or FUSE. Create your own 3d human models type of script for the Unity Engine. Looks rather interesting...

And then I looked at the other link to do with creating Interactive Dialog in Unity

CUTSCENES

MY LIST OF IMPOSSIBLE DEMMANDS Well the truth is I want my close-up scenes (where you walk up to people in the game to talk to or trigger off a turn-based cutscene) to be in Wide Screen Cinematics with the Subtitles on or just audio if they are turned off.  There is to be no other clutter at all or any game characters popping in and out like Mary Pop-ins with their small little speech dialog boxes.

You get enough of that pop up stuff with the unwanted websites..  Instead the game characters are to remain on the screen where they are at all times as they talking out their dialog and nobody is to dismiss themelves or pop out or in unless they are forced to leave the scene or to enter the scene as part of the game storyline.

For game intermission sequences (scenes) over radio transmisions with characters that are in another location, Tiny Pop up Pic with audio that turns on and of when they talking their audio to you and at the same time you answer and talk back audio to them (be even better if face pic is lip synching the audio).  THIS IS NOT TURN-BASED dialog. because you can still run around on the planet while still talking to them while on the move just like in real life.  So I want the interaction dialog in the game to be realistic fully interactive in these transmission intermission scenes.  

And if a party member is mumbling at random saying silly things every now and again like everyday people do when they talk loud to themselves, or speaking idle chat to you audio only.or show subtitles if its turned on.

So do I want to make a game like Orion 2 Universe which is all seems to be a turn-based game played on these boards?  No, I don't want everything in my game (in the 3d version) to be all just turn-based.  I want full 3d interaction in parts of the game as well especially for the ground and inside the ship) and just let the main storyline dialog be turn based with cinematics cutscenes (which can be also bypassed if you don't want to watch through them)...

The game engines are not yet at the point where they have got all the tools avaliable to allow users to quickly construct the big interactive scenes in the games like the one I'm trying to do. EXCEPT if you string together a bunch of powerful programs to help you do it like Worldmachine to build distant hills and landscapes with.   So I might give Unreal another chance.   Since it looks like it can import big scale landscape in from worldmachine.  I will take a look at worldmachine to see what it can offer, it might be just like Terragen in making the landscapes.   and for doing all the game props you would need 3ds max or Blender, and zbrush. I'm not sure what Zbrush is, I think is for smoothing the models to make them look more better and polished in the game but it probably creates the 3d models as well, and for trees and grass you would need a program like speedtree.    I haven't looked at these programs yet.  Because I have not started work on the 3d interactive landscapes of my planets.

And for the space skymaps I would need a 2d art generator program to draw the nebulas and stars and planets. for the skyboxes. and if in space itself, you would need th space skyboes as well as the 3d cloud nebulas to beable to fly into the actual nebula which would I think have to be generated either inside the engine as a 3d cloud or place in as a big static 3d mesh.

So let's start adding it up 

Worldmachine will cost $99 to use it if not using the pro license.

Zbrush over $700 dollars the commercial license will cost to use for a single user.

Speedtree Subscription based service $19 a month

3ds Max or Maya - Over $5,000 for these 3d modeling programs.  I love to see how they can keep this price up with the world already in a global recession. I think they need to rethink their strategy because people are not going to have the money when times are hard..

Alternative - BLENDER - FREE.

The Disadvantage, UNREAL likes Importing in from 3DS MAX or from MAYA can import from Blender, but dosen't always like Blender.

So we can either buy these programs, and bankrupt ourselves in the process, or we can wait until the tools for the game are made as plugins for the engines like with Unity with the Dialog text package, (Unity don't have cinema cutscenes in their Dialog package yet or UMA to procedurally create 3d game models inside the unity engine which is a break through for Fernando.  Or maybe they will create a realistic looking 3d ocean shader package as well. 

Ah Yes, unfortunately you need to script code to add in all the menu systems, the screens options, the separate screens from the game engine itself for the galaxy systems.  Hmm .

Ok so the machine script is the glue to all the bricks.  Well the batch to exe converter they have I don't think will work on my 52000 line batch script because its too long so it will crash, but if it did, then you have your 2d turn based massive game that the other guy was screaming out for because he loves those orion turn-based 2 board games.   And I do admit turn based does have an element of addiction about it, (especially loot rewards) but when I tried to turn my 52000 line batch script to exe the program just crashed, saying something like file is too long error can't process batch file too many lines ect, and then found it, it can only compile short length batch files, not large ones. So I don't have a compiler than can do large batch files to exe...

But For the 3d version the 3d is the harder way, Why don't I just gather in all the bricks anyway and then I can start glueing things in last if I can't glue them up all now.then at least I will have all the game components all done and just need to glue the whole thing all together.

Unreal, Is what I call a workhorse engine, so a workhorse engine expects you to do all the heavy manual lifting.  I hate that...Apart from its frequently lighting crashes, making you do everything all manually is the thing that I don't like about it. You have to do alot of extra work.

They got patent bricks out there too, got to be careful not to get hit by any of those. 

That's exactly what I'm getting at Unreal 3 is a workhorse, There are two things I don't agree with of Epic' Games engine set up methods. )THIS was UDK ENGINE I had these gripes.

1.  Making you manually fetch the script files to edit manually through a third party program to manually hunt for all the scripts to edit instead of writing in all the new script changes to your game project directory. 

2.  Placing Lighmaps objects in at the start, intead of letting us place all the lightmap objects after we have first built up all of our geometry. This causes lightmaps to have to always be rebuilt all the time, slowing down the buld development time down to a snails crawl.

Not heard of Vector Operations or Projections but I did with a help of another guy did put a random array in my first batch game for teleporting me to any location in the gameworld.  But I thought vectors was to do with 3d meshes or graphics.

But unreal 4 suppporting terrain map up to TEN TIMES the size of Skyrim, how can our machins support a terrain that size?

 Imagine how long it would take to build that map with lightmaps

Yeah I also thought that too that you just needed to turn off off the LIT mode and just build your geometry all up in the UNLIT mode instead and then when you ready, just rebuild all the lightmaps again and that solves the problem.  But it didn't. when I tried to build geometry in the unlit mode, the lightmaps stilll kept on crashing.

The Blueprint node system they use in Unreal is a bit like a C++ wrapper, the logic is the same, only difference with Blueprints, you don't have to type in those nasty brackets. you just plugin alot of these nodes instead.

Mind you maybe turning my batch file into an exe might speed up the running of it.  since exe's load themselves all into the ram don't they?

It's slow because I'm only using the wndows Cmd.exe dos interpreter to run the game with.  It reads only 1 line at a time into the memory.  so it has to spool it one line at a time reading from the HDD, that slows the HDD a little as the file gets more bigger and bigger as I continue adding lines of code into the script. So you start to get Lagging issues when the file reaches a certain size.....

If I had a batch to exe converter program that allowed big batch files to be turned into an exe file, then the game could then be loaded into the memory instead and it should run at a much more faster smoother speed with no more hitching or pausing issues.   But beause the 2d version is turn-based a slight pause isn't going to matter much. But when you have the 3d version, its going to matter.

The other option too is to pack the audio audio and graphics files into a big sound and graphics Resource library pack file and read the files directly from inside the file but I don't know how to do that.  But that would cut down all the hundreds of little files that cause hdd slowdown and lagging issues when the hdd has to skip over hundreds of little files in the directory just to try to read it.

But at the moment the batch converter that I did try out, only allows small batch files to be turned into exe' s and won't process a big batch file because when I tried the program had crashed on me when loading my file into it.

Reading the file from the disk is slower, its better to turn it into an exe file so it can use the memory to search all those Goto Labels, and just read the game resources files like graphics and sounds in from disk.

MACHINE SPECS: MY OLD MACHINE I have the game running on is a Nec Powermate series desktop computer.  with an Intel Core Tm2 Quad CPU. with 3 Gigs Ram 2.67 ghz (32 bit windows Vista  Operating System.and has a 990 mb hdd.. VPM on that machine is set to 4606 it has a Nividia Geforce 8600 GT video card in it. But the video card is starting to degrade,  I also have the game saved on my new machine also for a backup as well.  But the new machiine is an HP Pavillion all in one Pc Desktop with windows 8.1 with 16 gigs ram with an Intel Core TM i7-4790t CPU in it, 2.70 ghz with a 2 Terabyte Hard Drive with a Nvidia Gforce 810A video card.  That should be good enough to make a 3d game on it.

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UPDATE: NEW STUFF ADDED.  A Device called a WRCC or Wormhole Relocator Control Crystal has now been added.   Long story short. It allows you to shift the wormhole entrance if you can't access it manually by ship if a system has far too much dense clutter preventing access.  I will also include in some systems wormholes that are UNSTABLE and erractic and if you try to use these old decayed holes they will throw you anywhere in the galaxy so if you go in without the WRCC device and without the special Slipstream drive you are taking a risk of being thrown anywhere in the systems..........   It could take half an hour so before the wormhole finally appears back again in that system because its unstable and erractic.

Only a certain alien on one of the systems will have the WRCC But to get to him, you have to get pass the Megallanc Barrier (full of volatile gases),  so If you get too badly banged up trying to get through the barrier, you may have to find a trader elsewhere to upgade your shields first. It will be costly so  you will have to farm credits in order to buy the WRCC device if you want to use those old wormholes..

MINING: If you buy the Chiesek mining ore facility in Telos system, You get no staff, so you have to hire robots to staff it by asking the robots to work for you (they are found around the bars and clubs on Telos as soon as you buy the facility a mini treasure hunt game start and you need to hire 50 robots to staff it).  But these droids are part of Bad Sector, and they will have their individual Personalities, as well as their Machine Rights "Demmand cards" as all these these robots carry their own labor right cards with all the heavy brainwashing of Bad Sector's Machine Work Rights..  

One of the robots will be called corporate bull and if you come across that droid at reception he wil be pretty tough to try to convince to leave his job to work for you because he will defend himself with all kinds of time wasting corporate brainwashing waffle waffle nonsense from Bad Sector and I will give him up to TWO HUNDRED LINES of random utter rubbish to drone all away with.....If you grind all through all his business nonsene he will be the best worker, getting your mining extra credits.  The only way to hire hm, you have to listen to all his corporate promos and other rubbish to impress him enough to work for you.

If bandits attack the facility, they may even try to steal some of your droids and threaten to sell them for scrap metal.  If they break in and steal  droids, your mining facility will stop functioning until you replace the lost staff and get rid of the intruders.   if you Buy robots outside of Telos city to try to staff it with just slave labor droids from traders who don't beieve in Bad Sector's rights that will get the attention of Bad Sector because that faction is against slave labour of machines and try to cause trouble.

Also for the Dink Drink Drunk bar The bar that has overpowering Synthetic Drinks (these are not alcohol drinks) but they are alien drinks that have intoxicating effects.   I need music that sounds Drunken every now and again of Plinky Plonk notes that go all lopsided and off-key to suit the Wobbly Giddy Head-Spinning atmosphere in the bar..so even the alien piano player is all intoxicated while trying to play the piano.

The ony guy that'a not intoxicted in the bar is the barman (go figure.).  

The Drinks of this interstellar bar: Beat the Flake Shakes, Giddy Dew Drop Blocks, Nebula Sunrise, Saturn on the Rocks, and Unconscious Hits, The Head Spinner and Knockout Punch,, (bar is found in cities on certain solar systems;)

So I still think a 3d engine version is better than having just a 2d turn version based board system,. the advantage with a 2d turn based system is that I can put a whole load more rooms and alot more detail and switches and lags to put more depth in the storylines of the game than with a 3d engine which 3d has limitations on the amount of switches and flags I can use, unless you break it all down into small 3d modules but you do get a much better looking lifelike environment with 3D when you can get those 3d models and get all the dialog branches all working for them to bring it to life.

My Options

If I do a 3D version then I can probably do up to 200 systems, so the game would be alot smaller, but they would look better in 3d.  The downside: Alot more work to build and create, take a alot more GIGS for all the 3d resources, and is more trickier also to try to wire everything up, very slow development time is the downside of 3d...

If I continue to do the 2D turn-based version of the game, then I can fit alot more of the game in, 500+ systems. (very easy to build and make, fast and easy to wire this up.)

I put the game dialog and segments of its code is up on my website at http://tozan35.weebly.com

Its now 167k lines long.   But now its got some prettier graphics.  I now need to know how to set up an array in blueprints to choose different responses of the npc when you step into the trigger.

The Game is Called Tesseract Prime: The Unknown Universe.  This is a crazy game and the script can be read up on my website now like a book, its been put up online because its a non-commercial project, its non-commerical because the voice actors that were responsbile for voicing some of my game characters wanted the game to remain under a non-commercial license. The main game script code (its actually a runnable batch text file) with a couple of thousand of arrays in it which manage everything that's going on in the game. All the arrays is what glues the whole entire game together and acts a bit like a manager.   Those arrays are also responsbile for balancing everything out in the game and controlling all the loot drops, and stuff.  I do want this game to have level progerssions as well but its not been added in yet.

The game has around 100+ systems and worlds so far in it. But its not like No Man's Sky with billions of procedural created worlds.  Although it would be nice if I could have a self-procedural 3d universe engine.  As long as it dosen't keep crashing.

The Script file is now over 176 thousand lines long.  But I don't know if the game can retain its values still in the memory if I tell it to load up another batch file, in case I decide to split the main file up.  Problem is if I call up another batch file, when I want to jump back, I want it to jump back into the batch file to a certain goto label, not just jump back and start the batch file all from the beginning.

i have created one unreal area map of it already for Unreal Engine but the map has not fully been all debugged yet.  Plus it was only just a test map anyway....  I now have some of the models for the main party members, but not all. 

I see. Well I'm using the cmd interpreter to write all the script ideas out in text form for the game's development.   The game has to be developed first all in TEXT form before I can put it inside a 3d game engine environment.   The handy thing about writing the game out in text form is that I can display pictures as well as play all the sound effects and music from the game to set the mood I want for the scenes and display dialog in the console to see how the storylines play out and make any changes if I need to in this stage of the game's developement.  So the script has to be detailed that's why its got thousands of lines.... For its easy to make all the changes when the game is all in a readable text form. 

The engine I chose to develop the game for doing all the graphics is the Unreal Engine But I must have a text copy of all of the game ideas and concepts all laid out before me, So that's where the Batch Script Interpreter comes into it.    The batch interpreter Is not the main engine for the game, its just part of the stage of the game's development. 

I was using Unreal Engine 4.12.  I know how to do simple random arrays in the batch code, to get the game characters to give me different responses back to allow them to think, but not able to do the same thing in Unreal Blueprints with those nodes because with their sequence node they have got no random checkbox on it to allow me to just switch the inputs. So I don't know how to set up the array to swap text round in the widget for NPC's that give different responses back when you step into the on overlap trigger when you get close up to them, or get it to pipe the text in from a data struct text table for those npc's that use only static standard dialog instead of using array lists to allow the NPC's to form their own responses because what i wanted to do was to give my NPC's AI in their dialog and that requires advanced programming knowledge of the node system and what I want to do is beyond my basic knowledge of the engine. 

So I can't do it in Unreal Engine yet it only takes just only a few lines of batch code to do it in batch script using a random interger with strings of text for slots for the npc to use.. 

Because I don't have alot of knowledge on their node system for what I wanted to do But to use the unreal engine you need to have a good strong programming background.  With this engine you had to have a wide range of skills to beable to use it well.  This is why people work as teams on it because this engine was designed more for working with groups of people to pool together all their skills..

And that's the problem, the engine was designed only for working with a group of experienced programmers or a group of seasoned professionals.  So it was designed more for company work structures or professional studios.  instead of for individual home user or layman or single user. Yet the engine says its sutiable also for the home user and released the engine out to the public community to use. 

That engine gets also extremely technical and it has alot of issues going on with it so its not an easy engine to try to program in if you don't have all the years of experience of working with it and you are spending more time in trouble shooting the engine than in developing the game If you don't have a good working knowledge of the engine and its blueprint node system. 

Unreal allowed you to either work in C++ classes which I don't know anything about or use the blueprint script node system.

The scripting nodes for this engine are also separated all away from the 3d viewport window which makes it more a hassel and more uncessary clicking between the windows.  Am I an experienced programmer of this engine?, no. That's why I used the batch interpreter to plan the game out because it was much easier at least to create a text blueprint of my game plan.

The engine editor is also prone to crashing at times because it relies on caching everything each time you add in a new asset or new variable to it.  So there are things I like about the engine as well as things that I don't.... I certaily did not like it that you had to define all the layers for textures with the material nodes first before you can do any painting on landscapes, instead of just picking the textures out from the content browser for easy instant access to the layers, instead you had to wire up shader nodes first before you could use the textures for layers for landscape painting with which is ridiculous for the laymen user but understadable for the advanced users who want everything customized in the material editor...  But They should've supported both methods for both types of users not just support only the advanced programmer methods.

I only have 16 gigs of ram to work with.  But Unreal is RAM resource hungry and really needs 32 or higher to work with but found out that the HP All in one desktop home pc's can only be upgraded to just 16 gigs and no higher.. And yet windows can support ram upgrades up to 1tb, but computer manufacturers are producing home pc's with very little ram to upgrade to and I'm wondering just what's the hell is going on here.

The Red Editor was the easiest engine for me to use but that was only licensed for moddling the Red Faction game to make your own maps with....so It was designed to work more for the end user who didn't need lots of experiened programming knowledge or didn't need to be a professional and who was only interested in modding the game to add their own levels to the game.  You only had to have some skills to put maps together in it.  To do the scripting, you only had to link up the nodes within the 3d editor viewport window itself.  So the event sytem was integrated within the 3d viewport as editor objects for easy instant access. So I found the Red Brush Editor alot more user friendly and easier to use it was fast to script in it and build levels because the event nodes was integrated in the 3d viewport window itself with the 3d models.

Now As for Unity.  I think Unity was more into relying on knowledge of scripting classes instead of having a visual node system to work with.... 

As For UDK, yes I still have UDK (unreal development kit) but I didn't like it because it crashed alot because it had a few bugs in their BSD Editor.   I didn't like the way it calculated lighting in UDK, but its been improved in unreal engine 4.  You don't have to wait anymore for lighting to rebuild before you can use the editor, but in unreal engine 4 you can continue on working in the editor while waiting for the lighting to rebuild.

But What are the limits of these other engines?  Can they handle tens of thousands of lines of dialog, can they do array lists also that swaps text from a dialog table?   A storyboard flowchart system is no good to use and only sutiable for games with small amount of dialog because you can crash the engine if you have too many storyboards or flowcharts in the list.  So the only thing I can think of that can handle it would be the same type of engine that games like Kotor used. 

Unreal Engine can handle tens of thousands of lines of dialog too but only if you know how to write the binding function code to get the string array to pipe the text into the widget from a dialog data struct tables for the npc's and party members, its not that simple to do, requires advanced blueprint knowledge to set up all the nodes.  If you don't do text subtitles, then you can also just do audio instead for dialog but you still need to set up the triggers with the array lists if you want the npc's to give different answers or just use static text dialog that never changes.

I chose Unreal because of its graphics and shading abilities.. 

What I can do is set up the concept of the game all up in website form.   I'm also very fast at touch typing on the keyboard so that's no problem for me to write out thousands of lines of text.  so I don't need a typing pool of people.

But what I don't like with Unreal Engine is all the wiring up of these blueprint nodes that you have to do to get simple things done in it. .  To get a simple space simulator working in Unreal Engine 4., I had to spend FOUR hours wiring up all the nodes all the macros, and the many functions.  

Then there's all the problems of also not always having the right pins connections for the nodes.  Because you have to go by just the text names of the node because there's no preview picture window in the nodelist to show what the node looks like at a glance, so its like hunting around for a needle in a haystack all in the dark, so the engine is backwards and still using old outdated methods, and that's why it takes YEARS to make a game in it.. 

And that's not all, the engine also comes along with a mountain of technical issues to try to sort out as well which you can find all these issues that both inexperienced and also experienced users are having in the unreal user forums.  Its not just me having problems understanding how to set up the engine for my own game, its a whole load of other users also having issues as well.

You would need to turn the 3d models into animated sprites if it don't have a 3d open world game engine.  You would also need to hire a web server if this was to be turned into a open world Mmorg type tile game.  You would also have to deal with network overloads and server crashes, You would need to build either your own  custom web based software tools, or use a web game mmorg authoring tool.  You would also need knowledge in javascript or php programming as well.  And if you wanted to go commercial later on with it, then you would need to cover all the royalty free licensing fees. 

Yes, I noticed this in the Unreal Engine, the shortcomings of the AI system.... Which makes it look like a pretty shell when the AI fails at times to register properly, for even in Mass effect I noticed a few issues with the AI behavior of the pawns.  Yes I have got 3d models for the game.  That's how I was able to do this site to put my game storyline scripts all online.. 

If doing it in a 3d engine environment, You also need special facial animation software for the pawns to do the talking with the audio dialog,  I don't have that yet....

http://www.tozan35.weebly.com

I know only a little bit about the Unreal Engine, but I know nothing about Unity 3d.... I don't know where to get the software for Unreal to do facial anims besides the one that I know of, Faceshift, i think it was called but I don't think you can use your webcam but need to buy a special camera for using that software.   Yeah that's true, with Unreal you get only the bare basics as well, so its the same with unity you have to buy the plugins at the marketplace.

Yes I do have 3d models.  But I also need to find the 3d props.  Like some market tent stalls for one. for the markets area on Telos.

The reason why I made my game non-commercial is because its too big for it to go commercial, if it was a small project then it would be fine but its not a small project.

Oh That's easy because my game has got over 100 systems and different worlds in it, I can't cover all the game assets for a game of that size.  That's why my game is non commercial.

Its got over 100 systems, so it will take a while to fill those up and add in all the mini quests in it.   Its not like No Man's Sky which has got infinite worlds in it.  I've just come up with a new mini-boss called Grinch Inkster which is a forest tree monster on planet Noobus. But Ive still got to figure out how to do decisions in Unreal Engine Blueprints.  At the moment I've only got standard dialog working in it.  I've already got the ship's pilot model for Skinar now under development.

I don't know if there are any blueprint programmers on here.